Time and Faces
by MaidM
Summary: What does Jack get up to after PotW?


_Hello! It's about damn time, but I've posted a DW fic. Post-PotW Jack!fic, more specifically. I hopes you likes._

_Disclaimer: No! I won't say it! The Doctor, Rose, Jack, the TARDIS, and sonic screwdrivers don't belong to Russell T Davies, they belong to me! It's true! They do! Me I tell you!_

_Ah, dang._

_They don't._

* * *

  
The first day Jack sat in shock, not seeing the dead bodies, not hearing the empty whirring of the station around him, not caring about the fact that he was all alone. He sat in the control room, floor 500, staring at the empty place where the Tardis should have been, praying they'd come back and knowing they shouldn't. 

Day two Jack searched for survivors. All 500 floors, every room, shouting out until his voice was gone. At the end of the day he curled up on the floor beneath where the controller had been, certain he had been shot and not knowing why he was still there.

The third day Jack was hungry. He found a cafeteria with cold hamburgers, or whatever they were calling them then. He found showers in the Big Brother houses and noticed a burn on his chest he was sure wasn't there before.

Day four he remembered the control room after nights of sleeping in it and only seeing where the Tardis had been. Called Earth and told them everything. Earth didn't believe him.

Day five was spent burning bodies.

Day six Earth came. Took him back to land in a ship that creaked and wasn't invisible or camouflaged and was only as big on the inside as it looked from the outside. Asked to be left in London. Knew that they always went back to London.

Day seven Jack got drunk and fell asleep in a hotel for twelve hours. Felt much better after that.

Week one on Earth Jack got a job and rented a flat. It felt odd to him to be living in the same place for so long but he quickly got used to it. Met girls. Met guys. Stopped dreaming about Daleks every night.

The first month on Earth he watched the government. Watched as the economy blossomed, as people turned off their TVs and started waiting for when they were allowed outside again. He smiled as he saw Earth start moving towards the Earth he that knew it would become. Threw a party when they started broadcasting news again, got too drunk and woke up in a stranger's apartment with his clothes still back at his flat.

After a year Jack had charmed his way into a job at the Prime Minister's office. Really little more than a secretary, but he enjoyed it. Got to keep a close eye on everything and make sure all their hard work didn't go to waste. Saved the Earth from quite a few crazed aliens intent on ruling the world. Laughed when one of them had an emergency teleport and zapped away before he could get to them.

Exactly a month afterwards Jack found himself looking at a screwdriver and thinking it needed to be a little more sonic.

A year and a half had past when Rose found him sitting at his desk playing with his new sonic screwdriver by blowing up paperclips from across the table. Jack was sure he'd never been more happy to see anyone in his life.

Heard about the regeneration from Rose on the way to where the Tardis was parked in a park where a mall used to be. Told himself he could handle it. Because, as he told Rose, he wasn't as hung up on looks as he seemed.

The Doctor greeted him with a hug and Jack stayed stiff, not handling the fact that the Doctor's face was below his.

The first day on the Tardis Jack spent with Rose, drinking tea and eating chocolate and talking about everything that had happened.

Day two Jack spent with the Doctor, trying to get use to the jittery little man that had once had big ears and a leather jacket and insulted humans too much. Tried to find traces of Rose's Doctor under it all. He showed the Doctor his sonic screwdriver and claimed his was bigger, but this Doctor agreed.

By the end of the first week Jack stopped trying. Strangely he found that the less he tried to find the old Doctor in the new one, the more he saw. When he told Rose during their nightly snack of tea and digestive biscuits she confessed to doing the same thing.

The new Doctor took them to more new planets than the last one, planets even Jack had never heard of. They ate some strange Decavian equivalent of ice cream that The Doctor told them cheerily was made of the excretions of small crustaceans. Jack hesitated, but Rose tucked in happily enough, telling them she couldn't wait to tell people she'd eaten frozen shrimp poo and actually liked it. They all laughed and Rose rumpled the Doctor's new hair and Jack leaned on his shoulder and called him shorty.

The Doctor took them to fairs and riots and certain doom. He took them to beaches where the sun set every fifteen minutes and the natives were confused as to why the three of them were so eager to see them. They ran from aliens and monsters and crazed villains and saved countless worlds countless times. And he liked it.

Exactly two years after the regeneration Jack found the Doctor's leather jacket thrown over the back of a chair in one of the many studies. He gave it to Rose.

For the first time Jack talked to the Doctor about regeneration. He'd never seamed entirely comfortable with it, always moving too fast, hands that went a mile a minute and a mouth that went even faster. But he stopped when Jack asked him. Jack could tell he didn't like to talk about the last Doctor. Didn't like to remember. So Jack stopped asking.

His friend had died, but at least he got a new one in his place.


End file.
